


The Greatest Gift

by orphan_account



Series: The Polar Express [3]
Category: Polar Express - All Media Types
Genre: Destroying Childhood Memories, I'm Going to Hell, I'm Sorry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The conductor has spent the past year thinking about the ghost he met on Christmas Eve, and he isn't sure why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eryde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eryde/gifts).



> I'm sorry for potentially ruining childhoods and/or people's opinions of my other PolEx stories. This is a sequel to them, but you're welcome to pretend it doesn't exist, okay?
> 
> Eryde came up with the name David for the ghost. I chose James for the conductor because he just looks like a James, doesn't he? Opening and closing quotes are from Trans-Siberian Orchestra, as always. This particular song is “The Snow Came Down.”

_He stared into the night, no expectations_  
_But in his heart he wanted to believe_  
_That somehow, someone would be waiting there_  
_Upon this Christmas eve_

\--

The conductor didn't see the hobo again until the next Christmas.  He thought of the ghost often, sometimes taking out and rereading the name on the gift card Mr. C had left on the hobo’s present.  _To David_ , the card read.  The conductor considered this throughout the year, as he made monthly inspections of the Polar Express, as he took his annual vacation to the seaside (Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the United States), as he prepared the passenger list for the PolEx's next run.

And as he made the final inspection, the day before Christmas Eve, the conductor looked for the hobo but found no sign.  David had, as he described it, quit existing on the last December 26, and the conductor supposed he didn't begin again until Christmas Eve itself.  He hadn’t really expected anything else, but as he prepared for bed that night, the conductor found he _was_ expectant for the morrow.

_I’ve missed him_.  The thought, popping into his head just as he pulled his blanket up to his chin, was a bit unwelcome.  His life in between Christmases was rather lonely, and the conductor had always acknowledged _that_ ; it made him look forward to the PolEx’s yearly trip all the more.  It did him good to be around other human beings besides Smokey and Steamer, especially young human beings with all their infectious excitement and energy.  However, the conductor had never anticipated Christmas Eve in quite this way before, not since he himself had been a child, anyway.  The flutter he felt behind his breast bone, that was rather familiar, like it had been the Christmas he got his first model train set.  The conductor, then five years old, had peeked into the forbidden realm of his parents’ closet and seen the boxes marked “Lionel” two whole weeks before Christmas.  The next fourteen days had been the most delicious and most agonizing of his life before or since.  Knowing what awaited him, but knowing he had to _wait_ for it, was exquisite torture.  When Christmas finally arrived, and the boy who would grow up to be conductor of the Polar Express could finally call the coveted train his, he decided he could never be this happy again.  That night, he fell asleep with the locomotive against his chest, clutched in both arms as if someone might try to pry it away from him during the night.

Perhaps he wasn’t _that_ excited, but the conductor felt that same old flutter although he was now thinking of a much different train, for a much different reason.  He loved the Polar Express, of course, as much as he had, and still, loved his first Lionel (which was carefully preserved and even now held a spot of honor on a shelf in the small room he used as an office).  But he could see the PolEx any time he of the year wanted.  He only had one night to see the man who haunted it.

_Why do I even want to?_   That was a question for the ages.  The conductor stared up at his ceiling, a smooth white blur now that he had removed his glasses, and wondered.  The hobo—the ghost— _David_ was infuriating, he remembered that much.  When he tried to think back over the previous Christmas, that was really all that came to mind.  David’s mocking smirk, his sarcasm, his bitterness, as bitter as the coffee he loved to drink. . . .  All three had annoyed the conductor to no end, and they were all he could remember now.

And, somehow, he wanted to see them again.

Being primarily a logical man, the conductor pushed that thought away.  It made no sense, no more than it did for his mind to drift back to the ghost throughout the year.  But even when he didn’t think about David, when he firmly turned his brain to the logistics of the next night’s journey, that fluttery feeling remained, just below the surface, like the sound of snowy wind rushing by the PolEx’s windows in the night.

The night of Christmas Eve started without a hitch.  No late or indecisive children, no lost tickets or kids yanking on the emergency brakes during the first leg of the PolEx’s voyage.  After the hot chocolate had been served and the mugs cleared away, after the last child was on board and the train was headed north again, the conductor began his rounds.  Nothing was amiss inside the train, and that left him with only the top, above the warmly lit cars, to patrol.  He had put this part off until last, as if he were procrastinating on an unwelcome task. . . or deferring a welcome one.  Or both.

The conductor climbed, a bit stiffly, up the ladder at the back of one car, bracing himself against the stiff wind that blew snow against what little bare skin his uniform left exposed.  It was an especially bitter night, with fresh snow slanting downward at a forty-five degree angle even as the wind whipped up what had already fallen.  As the conductor plodded through the wind, he could hardly see the car’s roof under his feet, and he saw nothing else at all: no firelight, no shadows, no ghosts.

He stopped when he reached the last car before the coal car and stared into the blinding, wind-shifted whiteness in front of him.  The conductor wasn’t sure he even felt disappointed, or surprised, only that the flutter in his chest had gone out as if it were a candle flame snuffed by the snowy wind.

And then he felt a breath of warm air on the side of his neck, amidst the icy gale that whipped around him.

“Looking for something?”

The conductor jumped when the raspy voice spoke directly into his ear.  He scowled and turned his head; the hobo was standing right behind him.

“I was just making my rounds!” the conductor retorted.  The flutter did not return, but instead he felt like something had clenched in its place, a fist around the candle that molded the still-soft wax into a torturous new shape.

_Why did I want to see him?_ he wondered again.  This feeling hurt, as seeing his first train had not.  Then David grinned, still infuriating and sardonic, yet clearly glad to see him in return, and the conductor began to remember some of the other things he had noticed a year ago, like the youthful look that sometimes shone from the normally skeptical eyes.

“No accidents tonight?”  David was carrying his crate over one shoulder, and he lowered it now, shifting it to his other hand.  “Seems like a quiet bunch down there.”

“Yes, thank heavens,” the conductor sighed.  He reached up to adjust his hat, though it had managed to sit perfectly straight in the stiff wind.

“Hmph,” David scoffed.  He moved the crate back up to rest on the other shoulder.  “Boring!  Not a single doubter this year?  No one almost falling off the train?  What’s the fun in _that_?”

The conductor gave him a deadpan look from under the brim of his hat then started past the ghost, back toward the ladder.  “We don’t make this run for your amusement.”  When he reached the ladder and turned to climb down it, he glanced back up at David.  The ghost, watching him, hadn’t moved.

“Are you coming down?  Or staying up here?” the conductor asked.

“Hey, _somebody_ has to keep an eye on things up here.”  David smirked and dropped his crate, then plopped down on it.  A smoldering fire sprung up before him, flaring from one of the footprints the conductor had left in the snow.  He was still for a moment, not looking at the conductor now but watching the fire instead until he spoke again.  “But I’ll be down on the run home.”

The conductor nodded, although he wasn’t sure the ghost saw; then he descended the ladder and returned to the well-behaved children in the cars below.

\--

to be continued


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song David is singing on the train is a slightly altered version of Jethro Tull’s “First Snow on Brooklyn”. . . which is from 2003. Hooray anachronism!

He didn’t see the ghost again until the last child had been returned to her house and the Polar Express was on its way back north.  The conductor had just finished pacing the length of the train—inside the cars this time—putting things to rights.  They _had_ been a good bunch of kids this year; he found very little debris instead of the usual clutter of dropped handkerchiefs, lost slippers, and other forgotten items.  At the rear of the train, the conductor passed through the small caboose then paused: he could see the ghost silhouetted outside the back window.

The conductor pressed against the side of the car, where he hoped the hobo would be less likely to see him, and looked out.  The ghost seemed to be leaning on the rail enclosing the back of the caboose, playing his accordion and gazing out at the falling snow.  From inside the car, the conductor could hear the muffled sound of David’s harsh, scratchy voice singing.

_I rode in on the evening train._

_Is it such a good idea that I’m here again?_

_And I could cut my cold breath with a knife_

_And taste the winter of another life._

The conductor wondered where he had learned to play the instrument.  Before he had left home as a teenager?  Riding the rails in the years since?  . . . After he died?  The accordion seemed to be as ghostly and insubstantial as David himself and the rest of his accoutrements: the crate, the fire, the coffee.  Could he conjure any object he wanted?  Or were those things also ghosts, residual energies of the items which had filled his former life?

**_Objects_** _can’t have ghosts,_ the conductor told himself, shaking his head at his own fancy.  _There’s magic, and then there’s just plain illogic._

Outside, David sang on.

_Some things are best forgotten,_

_Some are better half-remembered._

_I just thought that I might be there_

_On your Christmas night._

The conductor turned away and walked back through the train to the dining car to make some hot chocolate.  By the time he finished and started back with two mugs, David had moved to—or at least appeared in—the passenger car where the children had been; he was seated at one of the tables, his hat and gloves removed, as if he belonged there.

“Merry Christmas,” muttered the conductor, sitting down across from him and handing him one of the mugs.

“Mmph.”  The ghost took a long drink.  “Thanks.”  He wrapped his hands around the mug, which must have been awfully hot on them.  The conductor looked at David’s hands: long-fingered with prominent knuckles and callouses visible on the sides of every finger.

“No trouble from the children this year?” the conductor finally asked him and turned his attention to his own cocoa.

“Didn’t see a one of them up top.”  David drained the rest of his mug in one gulp and set it down hard, making the conductor jump and cast a glare at him.  “This’s hardly a year worth waking up for.”

The conductor frowned into his mug.  “A calm run is a thing to be appreciated for those of us who _work_ it.”  David just laughed, raucously.

“And what about the rest of the year?” the ghost smirked.  “How hard does a train conductor work when his train only runs one day out of three hundred and sixty-five?”

“I have plenty to do!” retorted the conductor.  “There’s the train to inspect, and consulting with the boss on the next passenger list, and—”  He broke off and glared at David again, who only continued to smirk at him with the thin skin around his hazel eyes crinkling in mirth at the conductor’s expense.  “And who are you to talk?  You said yourself, _you_ don’t even exist during the year!”

“Maybe,” said the ghost.  The smirk faded, and he looked out the window at the snow painted blue under the moon.  The conductor finished his own chocolate and looked out too.

“Will you stay on this year?  For Christmas, I mean,” he asked after they had been silent a while.  The conductor had been thinking of this question for some time, had hesitated to ask it without being sure why.  Perhaps because he thought the ghost might say no, or because David might ask why it mattered.

“Yeah,” said David.  “Although I dunno what there is left to see after last year.”  He cut his eyes back at the conductor.  “There aren’t more elves, I hope?”

The conductor rolled his eyes.  “Just because you’ve seen one Christmas, doesn’t mean you’ve seen them all.”  More thoughtfully, he went on, “My past Christmases all seem the same in my memory. . . and yet, each year it seems different, too.  That’s the beauty of it, I suppose, and the magic.”

The conductor dozed fitfully in his private car until the Polar Express reached the pole.  This time, the ghost followed him off the train, and they left the station together.  Although the conductor was exhausted and rather eager to go home, David started instead toward the Christmas tree towering over the center of town.  The conductor stopped and made an exasperated noise, causing the ghost to pause and look back over his shoulder with a smirk.

“Hey, you’re the one who’s so big on experiencing Christmas.  Don’t tell me you’re getting too old for it. . . James.”

The conductor felt his cheeks grow warm, and for a moment, he wondered how the ghost knew his name.  Then he realized: _The same way I know his.  He must have seen my name last year on my gift from Mr. C._

He followed David to the tree, now deserted and glowing softly in the perpetual darkness of the polar winter.  The elves had long since gone to bed and the beginning of their two-week vacation before they started to prepare for next Christmas.  The air was still and cold, although not as cold, of course, as it was outside of town, away from the magic which sustained the dwelling of Santa Claus.  The conductor—James—looked up at the tree, circled by spiraling lights and garland which made it rather resemble the spiral mountain which the Polar Express ascended on its run every year.  The tree would come down on January 7, after Epiphany, to leave the town square open until the next December.  But for now, it stood huge and immovable, so tall the conductor could not see the star at the top when they stood close beside it.

David was looking at one of the ornaments, hung at his eye level: a purple and lavender hot air balloon with four yellow-tipped ribbons dangling from its sides.  A puff of cloud was attached to the top of the balloon like a tuft of downy hair.

“Where do the ornaments come from?” the ghost asked.  “Elves make ‘em all?”

“Some. . . but they come from all over.  Sometimes a child will leave one for Mr. C as a gift.  And each inhabitant of the North Pole has his or her special ornament on the tree.”

“Where’s yours?”

“Not sure.”  The conductor tilted his head back, scanning the tree, but its surface was far too expansive for him to spot the toy train engine hung in his honor.  “Hmm, we should get you one.  You _are_ an inhabitant of the North Pole.  Once a year, anyway.”

When the ghost didn’t speak, the conductor glanced at him and found David watching him with a little smirk—no, not really a smirk this time, more of an actual smile.  Small, but a smile nonetheless.

“What?” James asked suspiciously.

“You weren’t supposed to know about me,” said the ghost, a statement which really had nothing to do with the Christmas tree or ornaments.

“I thought you said there wasn’t a list of rules for being a ghost,” muttered the conductor.

“Oh, there ain’t.”  David shrugged.  “It was a personal goal: no one sees me, except maybe a kid now and then when I could do ‘em some good.”

“But. . . you saved my life, my first run,” James pointed out.

“Yeah, so?  You didn’t _see_ me.  You didn’t know who—or what—I was.  And I couldn’t’ve done _nothing_ and let you fall off the train, am I right?”  He moved to stand beside the conductor.  “But the one time I let my guard down, last year, there you were.”

James looked at the tree again, then made himself meet the ghost’s eyes.  “Maybe it was time.”

They looked at one another for a moment in the glow of the tree.

“I didn’t think you’d like me much,” David finally said.

The conductor blinked at him.  “Why not?”

The ghost chuckled.  “No ticket, remember?  You can’t tell me you don’t think of hoboes as freeloaders.”

“Well, I—”  James broke off, flushing a little.  It was exactly what he had thought when he was a regular train conductor, in the days before he boarded the PolEx.

“Heh.”  David’s smirk returned, that cocky look that so infuriated James even as it intrigued him.  “And I’ve watched you for a lot of years, remember.  I _know_ you.  You like order, everything in its place—even the magic things.  Ghosts don’t fit in to your world, any more than guys like me. . . drifters.  Or guys you can’t boss around.”

“You’re right,” James huffed.  “I _shouldn’t_ like you.  You’re a trouble-maker.  A. . . a doubter.”

The ghost watched him, the smirk gone again.  “Yeah.”

“But I _do_ like you.”  The conductor managed a little smile.  “I can’t help it.”

For just an instant, he thought he saw a look of relief pass across David’s face; then the cockiness returned.  “Yeah, well.  You wouldn’t normally be my type either, but I’ve gotten kinda fond of you.”

The conductor’s face felt warm again, but the rest of him was cold, and he latched on to that.  “Perhaps ghosts don’t feel the cold anymore, but I do.  If you’ve seen enough of the tree for now, I’d like to go home.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  David shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away from the tree.  “Lead the way.”

\--

to be continued


	3. Chapter 3

Mr. C had left gifts for both of them, just like last year.  James left his for later and went straight to his tub to wash off.  In previous years, he would have enjoyed a long soak, but he didn’t want to leave David alone for too long.  For one thing, he didn’t trust the ghost not to get into trouble.  But on the other hand, he kept remembering what David had said: _You wouldn’t normally be my type either. . . but I’ve gotten kinda fond of you._

_His “type”?  What is that supposed to mean?_   James wondered as he dried off and got dressed again—in clothes a bit more comfortable than his uniform.  When he returned to his living room, he found the ghost leaning back on his couch, holding out his hand in front of his face and looking at something dangling from it.  Moving closer, James saw it was a tree ornament, which David had hanging on his finger.

“My Christmas present—I went ahead and opened it.  How did he _know_?” the ghost muttered, cutting his hazel eyes up to the conductor then back at the ornament.  It was a snowflake, elaborately sculpted and painted a sparkling white.  Bits of glitter in the paint caught the light flickering from the fire David had built.

James shrugged.  “He’s Santa Claus.”  He sat down beside the ghost, trying to ignore the feeling of exhaustion that washed over him as soon as he was off his feet.

“But that doesn’t explain—I didn’t even _think_ about trees or ornaments until this morning.  He had to have left this during the night, while we were still on the train.”  He lowered his hand so that the delicate ornament rested on his knee and looked at James with a skeptical expression.  “You mean to tell me ol’ Kris Kringle can see the future?”

“I. . . I don’t know, but you’ll get used to things like that around here.”  The conductor looked down at the ornament and touched it lightly with a fingertip.  “A fine choice though.”

“Oh?  I don’t _sparkle_ ,” snorted the ghost.

James rolled his eyes.  “The snowflake, I mean.  When we first met, the snow. . . I almost thought you were made of it.  And then after Christmas, it was snowing when. . . when you disappeared. . . .”  He broke off, remembering how the wind had gusted as he looked out of his door, watching the ghost walk back toward the train station. . . how the snow had swirled suddenly and David seemed to just dissolve into a million flakes.  How lonely the conductor had felt.

David grasped his hand, and James jumped.  The ghost held his hand open long enough to put the ornament in it; then he stood and stretched.

“Mind if I use your shower?”

“Be my guest.”  The conductor gestured toward the bathroom over his shoulder.  When the ghost had gone, James set the ornament down on his coffee table and leaned back on the couch to close his eyes for a moment.

“Hey.”

The word was murmured softly in his ear.  He jerked his eyes open and turned his head to see David sitting beside him again.  The ghost was wearing one of James’s bathrobes ( _Just like last year_ , James though), and his brown hair was damp and rumpled, as if he had dragged his fingers through it.

“You fell asleep,” the ghost informed him, grinning.  “You _are_ getting old.”

“I just haven’t slept well lately,” the conductor retorted.

“Looked like you were sleeping pretty good to me.”  He added, more sympathetically, “Go on to bed.  I can amuse myself for a few hours.”

“No, no. . . I’m all right.”  James managed to sit up, although the thought of going back to sleep was tempting.  “I’m concerned about leaving you alone to ‘amuse yourself’ in my home.”

David raised one eyebrow.  “I could come to bed with you instead.”

James nearly fell off the couch.  “ _What_?”  The ghost’s eyes moved over his furiously blushing face, and he burst out laughing.

“I meant to _sleep_.  What are _you_ thinking about?”

“I—fine, stay here.”  Flustered, the conductor got up, now more than happy to escape.

“Uh, wait.”  David stood too and touched his right arm as he turned away.  “Sorry.  S’pose I shouldn’t tease you too much while I’m your guest.”

“It’s. . . it’s okay.”  James turned back to him, still blushing slightly.  “I suppose I do need some rest.”  He risked a look at the ghost’s face; David’s eyes met his own and held them.  They had that look of perpetual youth James remembered, and he thought, _He must be as old as I am, if not older, but he died so young.  And so hard._   The ghost’s face bore the damage it had taken during his lifetime: a nose crooked from being broken, a faint horizontal scar beside one eye, a very few wrinkles that had formed on his forehead.  He probably had been quite handsome before he left home for the hard life he knew in those last eight years before his death.

_He’s still handsome._   James couldn’t deny it, just like he could no longer deny that he wanted to grasp the hand that still rested on his arm and hold it.  Wanted to touch David to make sure he was still substantial and wasn’t going to disperse into a billow of snow again. . . that he would still be there when James woke up.

He finally did that much, lifted his left hand and covered David’s with it.  The ghost _did_ feel solid, his calloused fingers warm between James’s hand and sleeve.  This time, David’s face was the one to color, and James saw his throat move as he swallowed.

“How quickly does the time pass?” the ghost asked.  His voice, usually raspy, sounded downright hoarse.

“What?”

“In between Christmases.”

“Oh.”  The conductor frowned, thinking.  His mind felt slow and fuzzy.  “Quickly enough, I suppose.  There’s a lot to do from about September onward, but even after about mid-January, we’ve started preparing for the next Christmas.  The nights are long, though.  And if I’m being entirely honest. . . my job is only demanding on Christmas Eve.  I have it much easier than the elves—as they’ll be quick to tell you.”  He glanced down at his hand, still covering the ghost’s.  “When I’m not working. . . Christmas seems very far away.”

“The year can pass in a minute,” David muttered, “when you don’t exist.  It’s like when you’re a kid trying to stay awake to hear San—‘Mr. C.’”  James could just _hear_ the sarcastic quotation marks around the name.  “When you _do_ fall asleep, bam, it’s Christmas morning.  But if you keep waking up. . . and every time it’s only thirty minutes gone by, or maybe an hour. . . morning doesn’t come.”

The conductor asked, “Do you?  Keep waking up, I mean?  I thought you just. . . stayed gone until—er, well, how _do_ you know when it’s time to start existing?”

“You mean, is there an existential alarm clock?”  David rolled his eyes.  “No.  I’m just _here_ again, and I know it’s the right time.  But this year. . . yeah.”  His voice grew a little softer.  “I kept waking up.  Time doesn’t pass at all, sometimes, when I’m awake.  And that’s when I think about going out for good.”

“David—”  It was the first time the conductor had spoken his name, and the ghost’s hand constricted on his arm.  “Don’t.  Don’t—give up, and stop existing altogether.  I know you. . . have your doubts, but you’ve done good for the PolEx and the children who ride her.  It may not happen every year, but sometimes there will be that one child who needs you—the one I can’t reach, that even Mr. C can’t reach without you to help him or her first.”

David’s eyes _did_ hold doubt as they met the conductor’s.  James lifted the ghost’s hand from his arm and looked down at it instead.  There was a scar there too, across the back, that James hadn’t noticed before.  He drew his thumb over the whitened ridge of flesh that felt so human.

“I missed you,” he finally admitted, still looking down.  “If I knew you weren’t coming back. . . .”

“You’d miss me, hunh?”  David suddenly twisted his hand, palm up, and closed his fingers over James’s.  “I wondered if you would, those times I woke up.”

“I would.”

David hugged him then, abruptly, like the children sometimes hugged each other before they got off the Polar Express at their houses.  Normally, James didn’t have patience for that sort of thing—it delayed his train, after all—but the child-like shyness was something altogether different coming from the worldly ghost.  Maybe it was because no one else had ever missed him except for the sister David had mentioned the previous year, but the ghost seemed to let his guard down all at once.  He pressed his forehead against the side of James’s neck, resting his cheek on the conductor’s shoulder.

James made a small noise of surprise, just barely managing to hold back the choked cough he felt rising in his throat.  David’s back felt warm as James put shaking arms around it; he felt real, alive.

“Go get some sleep,” David muttered.  James felt the ghost’s breath on his clavicle and wanted to say no; he didn’t want to let go.  But at the same time, he felt unnerved and almost frightened; so he dropped his arms and took a shaky step back.  David glanced at him, once, without the smirk or the usual know-it-all expression in his eyes, just a sort of confused look that rather matched what James was feeling.  Then the ghost deposited himself back on the couch, and the conductor went to bed.

\--

to be continued


	4. Chapter 4

When James woke up, some two hours later, the ghost was asleep on the couch with a pillow wedged between his head and his folded arm.

 _So much for him causing trouble,_ James thought with a little shake of his head.  The snowflake ornament on the table caught his eye and reminded him that he still hadn’t opened his own gift.  Settling into an arm chair at a ninety-degree angle to the sofa, James slid a finger under the edge of the green wrapping paper on the small box Mr. C had left for him.  He folded the used paper up neatly and dropped it on the floor, next to the crumpled mess of wrapping David had left from his own gift, then opened the box.

As he had expected, it was another piece for his model railroad, specifically a caboose for one of the trains.  James smiled to himself; no surprises this time.

“That’s not very interesting.”  He jumped and looked at the couch, where David was watching him with his chin propped up on the arm.  “D’you ever think of anything besides trains?”

“At least it doesn’t sparkle,” the conductor quipped back at him.  He set the caboose down beside the snowflake.  “Do you want something to eat?  I just realized it’s been hours. . . .”

“I don’t gotta eat, you know.  Dead, remember?”

James shot him a glare.  “I didn’t think you needed to sleep either, but there you are.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I don’t _enjoy_ some of the stuff I did when I was alive.”  David sat up and raked a hand through his hair, leaving it even messier than before.  “So yeah.  Breakfast would be nice.”

He followed the conductor into the small kitchen, where James put him to work brewing coffee before he himself started to cook eggs and bacon.

“You’re so. . . _domestic_ ,” said the ghost, watching him.

“I’ve lived alone for a long time,” James retorted even as he flushed indignantly.  “If I didn’t know how to cook by now, I would have starved a long time ago.”

“I ain’t complaining.”  David chuckled and reached directly into the frying pan to grab a slice of bacon.

“What in the blazes are you—” James began, breaking off when the ghost shoved the bacon into his mouth then licked his fingers clean.

“Dead,” was all he said to explain why he didn’t burn himself.

“No manners is more like it,” replied the conductor.  Nevertheless, he didn’t protest them eating standing in the kitchen; he was too hungry.  David still drank his coffee black, and he was already on a third cup by the time they finished eating.  The conductor watched him, leaning against the counter with both rough hands wrapped around the mug.  If he couldn’t be burned, no wonder the heat of the mug didn’t bother him.

The ghost flicked his gaze up to meet the blue eyes looking back at him.  “What?”

“Nothing.”  He finished his own coffee, with cream and a half teaspoon of sugar, then turned to put his mug in the sink with the other dishes.  “Do you want to go put your ornament on the tree?”

“Not yet.  I’m enjoying being warm.”

James turned back to him, exasperated.  “You can’t burn yourself, but you get cold in the snow?”

David grinned.  “I _told_ you there’s no rules.  And it drives you crazy, don’t it?”  He seemed pleased by this fact; then he relented and explained, “I pick and choose, honestly.  No, the cold don’t bother me if I don’t want it to, but I can still appreciate being comfortable.”  He set down his mug and held out his arms, examining them in the conductor’s navy blue robe.  “This isn’t bad, by the way.”

“Mr. C should have given you some more clothes, so you don’t keep taking mine,” James sniffed.  He looked at the ghost’s bony wrists protruding from the sleeves’ cuffs.  “And so they’d fit.”

“Eh, I’ll put it on my list next year,” David said sarcastically.  He dropped his arms and cocked his head to the side.  “You ever ask for anything? Seriously?”

James shook his head.  “It’s always a surprise.”

“Not much of one, I bet.  Always a train.”

“Not always,” James protested.  “Sometimes it’s more track, or scenery.”

David laughed, hard.  “So.  Predictable.”  Before James could be offended, the ghost went on, “That’s what I like about you.  One of the things, anyway.  But come on, ain’t there anything else you want?”

“Nothing the boss could bring me.”  James moved back to the sink and looked down at the dirty dishes.  “I have everything I need.”

David’s voice was quiet.  “Yeah?”

“Except it gets lonely.”  The conductor hadn’t meant to say it at all, but there it was, and he kept talking.  “Especially around the end of January, when things have been quiet enough to get boring, but long before they need me to prepare for the next run.  From. . . February to about September, when it gets really busy again.  And even then. . . .”  He didn’t know why he was still speaking, or why the easily-bored ghost hadn’t interrupted him by now.  “When I first signed on with the PolEx, I thought I’d get used to it.  I thought I _had_ gotten used to it.”

“But then you started waking up at night,” David rasped from his place against the counter, to James’s right.  “And you’re right.  It’s damn lonely.”

James didn’t know the ghost had moved until he was suddenly there at the sink beside him.  “Do you want me to stay here with you?”

The conductor’s mouth went dry.  “You. . . _can_ you?  Don’t you have to. . . .”

“No rules, remember?  No ghost handbook.  Can’t say I know for sure what’ll happen, but I don’t think I’ll just up and disappear.  But. . . do you _want_ me to stay with you?”

He finally looked at the ghost again, although it was difficult.  David’s eyes were fixed on him, intent and apprehensive.  James put out his hand to touch the ghost’s arm, felt the wiriness of his tendons tensed beneath his sleeve.  Then David relaxed, moved closer, leaned against him with his head on his shoulder like before.  James put both arms around him with one hand at the back of his head, fingers laced into his messy hair.  David’s arms were pressed against his back, hands on his shoulder blades, holding James to him.

“Stay with me,” James was finally able to say.

“I’m hard to get rid of.”  He felt David’s breath against his collarbone again as the ghost spoke.  The sensation made his arms and legs break out in goosebumps, but then David shifted his head slightly, and when he spoke again, his lips brushed James’s neck.  “Just _try_ to exorcise me.”  It felt like an electric shock.

“That’s. . . that’s demons.  Evil spirits.  Not ghosts.”

“Who’s better acquainted with the supernatural here, me or you?”  They might have been bickering like usual except for how they were holding each other, and how James felt every word David growled in that husky voice against his neck.  His fingers tightened in the ghost’s dark hair.

James hadn’t been this close to anyone in—well, since a good while before he first boarded the Polar Express, and he hadn’t missed it.  He had _thought_ he hadn’t missed it.  But now he was starting to tremble, and there was no way David couldn’t feel it.  When the ghost had asked if James wanted him to stay, James hadn’t made any assumptions about what he meant by “with you.”  Stay in a corporeal form?  Stay at the North Pole, rather than blinking out of existence?  Surely that was what he had meant.  Not “stay with you with my head on your shoulder and my mouth on your neck, driving you crazier than any lack of rules ever could.”

James tilted his head back, trying to catch his breath; then David’s mouth was on the tendon running from his ear to his sternum.  He felt the ghost’s lips, teeth, then tongue there, caressing him.  James made an undignified noise, half gasp and half squawk, and David paused, without moving his mouth away.

“Is that okay?” the ghost breathed.

“ _Yes_.”  It was more than okay.  David’s mouth moved up, never breaking contact with his skin, to kiss just below his ear, where his jaw hinged.  How could another man—a _dead_ other man—this particular dead other man act so sensually?

James’s hands felt like they were moving on their own, one pressing David’s head against his neck and the other dropping to the small of the ghost’s back.  David’s mouth shifted to his shoulder, and his tongue flicked over the hollow beside his neck, between the shoulder muscle and clavicle.

“David,” James breathed.

“Yeah?”  The ghost mumbled against his skin, then lifted his head.  James wondered for an instant if he were making a mistake; thought, _No.  No, I’m not_ ; and turned his head enough to kiss David’s mouth.  It was not an especially adventurous kiss, close-lipped and really more on the side of the ghost’s mouth than full on.  But this time David was the one to make an odd noise, and his hands clenched over James’s shoulder blades.  His left hand fell away then came to rest against the side of James’s head, turning it a little more so David could kiss him back, squarely on the mouth this time with his rough, chapped lips slightly parted.  The ghost paused, breathing hard despite being dead, with their mouths no more than an inch apart.  “Yeah?” he said again.

“Did you ever think about this. . . when you woke up during the year?”

The answer was barely audible.  “Yeah.  And before that.  Another reason you weren’t supposed to know about me.  Didn’t think you’d go for it.”

James was floored by this revelation.  “I. . . .”

“Shh.”  David kissed him again, this time drawing his tongue over James’s lower lip.  James reciprocated, hesitantly, not sure how good he’d be at it, but then neither of them had kissed anyone else in a long, long time.  David tasted like the coffee he’d just finished, although that was exactly how James had imagined he’d taste anyway.  They kissed slow and deep until James had to stop and catch his breath.

“I guess if I’m staying, we _should_ go hang that ornament.”  David grinned with obvious delight at the frustrated look James gave him.  He leaned up and whispered in James’s ear, “We have all year, remember?”

James’s eyes flicked down to the ghost’s neck and the bit of his shoulder visible where the bathrobe had slipped aside.  With an uncharacteristic smirk of his own, James bent his head and planted an open-mouthed kiss there—a kiss that ended with a nip of his teeth just before he stepped aside and went to the kitchen door.  The groan that escaped David was quite satisfying.

“If we’re going out, I’ll need my coat—and even if you _don’t_ get cold, you’ll look silly walking around in the snow in a bathrobe.”

\--

to be continued


	5. Chapter 5

They walked back to the tree in silence, both with their hands in their coat pockets although the snowflake ornament dangled from David’s as well.  The snow was falling again, lightly.  James was glad for the outing, now, because the cold air and brisk walk were helping to clear his head.  He still didn’t think he’d made a mistake, but he _did_ feel more in control of himself.

When they got to the tree, David stood looking up at it a minute, one side of his mouth turned down in a thoughtful frown.

“Gotta find the right spot,” he muttered.

“Well, we’re rather limited without a ladder.  Unless you can fly, too.”

David made a face at him.  “I have many talents, but that ain’t one of ‘em.”  He walked up to the tree and gestured up at an empty branch.  “How ‘bout there?”

James joined him at the tree and nodded.  The ghost hung the ornament in the open spot and stepped back, then nodded too.

“Good.  One small spot of sanity among all those elves.”

“Sanity?” scoffed the conductor.  “You?”

“Listen here, I’m the one little piece of reality that gets in through all the magic around here!”  David jabbed him in the chest with a finger, but he was grinning.

“So ghosts are part of reality, hmm?”  James looked him up and down.  “And you don’t think magic had anything to do with you becoming one?  If the PolEx hadn’t been there that night. . . .”  He trailed off when he saw the expression that came over David’s face.  “Oh, I. . . .”  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t—”

“Nah, you’re right,” David muttered.  “If the PolEx hadn’t been there, I might’ve just died, and that’d have been it.  Poof.”  He looked down, his expression thoughtful but still a little pained, and James wished he had thought before he spoke.  He reached out and grasped David’s upper arms.

“But it _was_ there, because you were meant to be part of ‘all the magic around here,’ whether you like it or not.”  David flicked his eyes back up to James’s, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile.  James added, “And. . . and I’m glad you are.”

“So’m I,” said the ghost.

James let go of him, thinking of something Mr. C often said: _There’s no greater gift than friendship._   He was probably right—he usually was.  _Friendship has to be the start,_ James thought, _although what’s beyond that is a great gift, too.  And we have plenty of time to become better friends.  All the time in the world, in fact._

David looked at the tree again, at his snowflake ornament hanging there amidst those belonging to all the elves who so grated upon his nerves.  Then he grabbed James’s hand, again like the children sometimes did with one another, and tugged him in the direction of home.

“C’mon, it’s freezing out here.”

“I thought the cold didn’t bother you when you didn’t want it to,” James commented as he walked beside the ghost, clutching his gloved hand.

“I want it to,” said David.  “It makes _you_ feel that much warmer.”

He was right, too.  Just like Mr. C, he usually was.

\--

_And when his train, it pulled into that station_  
_He saw there was a single pair of tracks_  
_Within the snow and leading to that station door_  
_And he followed those steps back_

_And on this night of our salvation_  
_Where dreams that have been lost can there be found_  
_They walked away together on that Christmas Eve_  
_While all that night, all that night the snow came down_

\--

The End


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